My name is Seti, and I am a scribe living in Egypt in the year 1353 BC.
A scribe is someone who reads and writes for people who cannot, and because not many people are literate, scribes are very valuable.
We help government officials run the country and businessmen keep track of their goods.
Scribes write down histories of great battles, the number of cattle in a herd, and anything else that needs to be remembered.
To become a scribe, young boys usually have to be born into the profession.
My father was a scribe, so I became one too, and at seven years old, I went to a palace school.
Students sat around the teacher and sang songs to memorize different words,
and after we learned the words, we would practice writing on pieces of broken pottery.
If a student made a mistake, the teacher would hit him on the back with a stick and say,
"A boy's ears are in his back—he will listen only when he is beaten!"
Student scribes always made sure they knew their lessons well, if only to avoid the teacher's anger.
It took me four years to learn how to read and write, and I learned to write in two different ways: hieroglyphic and hieratic.
A hieroglyph is a picture that tells a reader what a word means, and each picture is a word or sound in the Egyptian language.
A scribe must memorize and be able to write over seven hundred different pictures.
Hieroglyphs are sacred, which means they are special to the gods, so they are used for tombs and monuments.
For everyday communication, such as business letters, receipts, and government documents,
we use hieratic writing, an alphabet of simple letters that are based on the hieroglyphs.
After four years of school, I became an apprentice on the estate of a wealthy man who employed several scribes to keep his accounts.
They taught me how to write his official letters and keep records of his possessions and trading activities.
For example, I learned to write down the day, month, and season of each trade,
what items were traded and received, and the name of the merchant involved in the transaction.
I also had to carefully note the measure of what was traded whether it was a basket of grain, a jar of oil, a tall slave, or a large cow's head.
Even though I wasn't paid, I gained a lot of experience working on a large estate.
After my five-year apprenticeship, I was hired by the great pharaoh Amenhotep III as a scribe for the royal family.
Amenhotep III has ruled Egypt for 37 years and has made our country very wealthy.
He has ordered many statues and temples to be built,
so scribes are needed to organize all the work and record all the supplies needed and used for the construction.
In my position I write all the pharaoh's official letters to foreign kings in distant lands,
and letters for royal family members who wish to keep in touch with relatives throughout the country.
Every year scribes also write down how much grain has been grown and then calculate how long the grain will last after it is stored in the grain house.
Storing grain can be difficult as fire, rats, and insects can be a problem,
so the scribes must keep a careful tally of the grain as it sits in the grain house.
In addition to recording agricultural matters, scribes read, copy, and archive all government documents, tax records,
and the religious laws of the country each year to make sure the libraries are up-to-date.
More than anyone else, scribes are very well-informed about the business of Egypt.
Scribes are also hired to write magic prayers and the names of the deceased on their coffins.
Egyptians believe that when a person dies, he or she lives on in an afterlife,
so scribes write magical words to protect the spirits of the dead and to help the person find a path to the afterlife.
These magical prayers have always been written in the pyramids for the pharaohs,
but long ago scribes started writing coffin prayers for common people too.
When I write, I use paper called papyrus, which is made from the stem of a reed that grows along the Nile River.
The stem strips are cut, moistened, and layered on top of each other at right angles.
Then they are pounded together and dried to make a sheet of paper.
If I must write a long report, I paste the pages together to form a scroll that's rolled on two wooden handles.
Sometimes I write on pottery, stone tablets, or parchment, which is made of animal hides stretched thin and dried.
I have a wooden tablet called a palette with two holders for red and black ink, which is made with papyrus juice and another material for color.
Red ink is made from red clay, and black ink is made from soot.
The palette also holds my writing brush, which is made from the hollow stem of a grasslike plant called a rush.
Before I can write with my brush, I chew on the end to soften it, so it can absorb the ink.
The hieroglyph that stands for "scribe" is a picture of the equipment I use.
Because of our ability to read and write, most people think scribes have mysterious powers from the gods, so we are treated well and get very rich.
Because I'm a royal scribe, no one gives me orders except the pharaoh; therefore I don't have to do any hard work.
The ability to read and write has given me a good life, but I feel sorry for the ordinary workers in the kingdom.
Tired bodies and low pay are their only reward.